 | ||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
Presidential election | ||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
General elections were held in Costa Rica in April 1872. [1]
After the coup against dictator Jesús Jiménez Zamora on April 27, 1870, and after the brief government of Bruno Carranza Ramírez, Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez succeeded on August 8 and elections were called by the then provisional president Guardia on 8 of May 1872. [2] It was the first time that the presidency was exercised by a military. [2]
For these elections the constitution of 1871 was in force, which established that all Costa Rican males of 20 years of age or 18 if they were married or were professors of a science or whose income was according to their social condition, could vote. This allowed the majority of male citizens to vote (female suffrage was not introduced until 1949) since it did not require literacy and the economic requirement was very ambiguous and could be applied to almost any person of any social class. [2] The vote was public and only chose the second-degree electors. The second-degree electors had to be over 21 years old, literate and had an annual income of 150 pesos or more or at least 500 pesos in property. [2]
| Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez | 311 | 99.04 |
| Gregorio Trejos | 2 | 0.64 |
| José María Castro Madriz | 1 | 0.32 |
| Total | 314 | 100.00 |
| Source: TSE | ||
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 26 July 1953, José Figueres Ferrer of the National Liberation Party won the presidential election, whilst his party also won the parliamentary election. Voter turnout was 67.2 percent in the presidential election and 67.5 percent in the parliamentary election. Local elections were also held.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 6 February 1966. José Joaquín Trejos Fernández of the National Unification Party won the presidential election, whilst the National Liberation Party won the parliamentary election. Voter turnout was 81.4%.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 3 February 2002. For the first time in the country's history, no candidate in the presidential election passed the 40% threshold. This meant a second round of voting had to be held on 7 April which saw Abel Pacheco of the Social Christian Unity Party defeat the National Liberation Party's Rolando Araya Monge.
The Constitution of Costa Rica is the supreme law of Costa Rica. At the end of the 1948 Costa Rican Civil War, José Figueres Ferrer oversaw the Costa Rican Constitutional Assembly, which drafted the document. It was approved on 1949 November 7. Several older constitutions had been in effect starting from 1812, with the most recent former constitution ratified in 1871. The Costa Rican Constitution is remarkable in that in its Article 12 abolished the Costa Rican military, making it the second nation after Japan to do so by law. Another unusual clause is an amendment asserting the right to live in a healthy natural environment.
Head of State elections were held in Costa Rica between 3 and 16 February 1833. Manuel Aguilar Chacón, supported by liberal groups from San Jose and Alajuela, obtained 21 electoral votes cast by the second-degree electors elected by universal male suffrage weeks before. However, the minimum necessary to win was 22 votes according to the constitution at the time, thus the election was declared null and it would correspond to the Parliament, then called the Constitutional Congress, to choose the Head of State, choosing conservative and monarchist José Rafael Gallegos.
Head of State elections were held in Costa Rica on 11 April 1847, shortly after a coup d'état that overthrew the first head of state elected in direct elections; Francisco María Oreamuno Bonilla who was formally overthrown although he had previously left office without resigning. The de facto president was José María Alfaro Zamora who was a candidate but was defeated by José María Castro Madriz.
General elections were held in Costa Rica between 2 and 9 December 1849. They were the first presidential elections after the Reformed Constitution of 1848 created the title of "President". Previously the equivalent office was called "Head of State".
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 4 April 1853. President Juan Rafael Mora Porras was re-elected, having been elected in 1849 to end the period of José María Castro Madriz.
General elections were held in Costa Rica between 3 and 7 April 1859. Juan Rafael Mora Porras, hero of the Filibuster War, was re-elected for a third time. However, Mora would not finish his term because he would be overthrown by his political opponents on 14 August later the same year.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 27 March 1869. They took place while the dictator Jesús Jiménez Zamora was in power after the coup against José María Castro Madriz, whose constitutional term was unable to finish. Jiménez Zamora was the sole candidate, during his government he repressed the press and his political opponents. The 1869 constitution only allowed men over 25 years old owners of a property that had a value higher than 200 pesos to vote.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 2 April 1876. Aniceto Esquivel Sáenz was elected president unanimously thanks to the influence of the acting president Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez who practically hand picked him. At that time and according to the Constitution, there were two electoral rounds; first all citizens legally allowed to vote chose electors and then the voters voted for the president.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 9 July 1882. They were the first after a long line of successive de facto governments following the coup against Aniceto Esquivel Sáenz by his former ally Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez. Vicente Herrera Zeledón, Costa Rica's first conservative president, was placed in Esquivel's place, but in practice he was a puppet of Guardia's authoritarian regime. After the brief presidency of Herrera who resigned using health reasons as excuse, the political elite appoints Guardia to replace him. However Guardia died in 1882 and elections were called, which were won by Freemason and liberal Próspero Fernández Oreamuno member of the Olympus Generation, an elite group of liberal intellectuals nicknamed as such due to their arrogance.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 4 April 1886. After the death of Próspero Fernández Oreamuno in March 1885, Bernardo Soto Alfaro took over the presidency temporarily for the remainder of the term. Soto was a thirty-year-old young man who had to command the country in the war against Guatemala that sought to re-establish the Federal Republic of Central America. Soto was a freemason and liberal, belonging to "The Olympus", a group of liberal intellectuals who would have a great influence on Costa Rican politics and many would hold the Presidency of the Republic.
General elections were held in Costa Rica in 1889. Electors for the electoral college were elected on 7 October 1889, who in turn elected the president on 1 December 1889. It was particularly notorious for been the first time in Costa Rica's history that political parties took part in an election. The date of November 7 is still commemorated in Costa Rica as "Democracy's Day" due to the outcome of the liberal government accepting the results of the conservative opposition, as to that point, authoritarian governments were the norm.
The 1901–1902 Costa Rican general election occurred under growing political tensions. The authoritarian government of Rafael Yglesias was in direct confrontation with the opposition and had re-elected himself as single-candidate in the previous election by a questionable constitutional reform. The liberal Republican Party represented the most staunch opposition and the country was on the edge of civil war. However, Yglesias managed to negotiate with the moderate branch of the Republicans for a peaceful power exchange.
The 1906 Costa Rican general election was held during the presidency of Ascensión Esquivel Ibarra. Ibarra openly supported candidate Cleto González Víquez. Other candidates were former president Bernardo Soto Alfaro, former State and Police Secretary Tobías Zúñiga Castro, the also former State Secretary Máximo Fernández Alvarado and former justice and Foreign Secretary Ezequiel Gutiérrez Iglesias. Difference were more personal than ideological as all candidates except Gutiérrez were liberals, and the election had a strong "anti-cletista" component. This "anti-cletismo" was what united the opposition and talks about a common joint front occurred but it was not applied. Gutiérrez was candidate of the conservative "Democratic Union", the party that emerged from the now outlawed Catholic Union.
The 1910 Costa Rican general election was held during the presidency of Cleto González Víquez. This was the last time that indirect elections were held in Costa Rica as for the next one in 1913 the direct vote was implemented. Liberal lawyer Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno was elected for the first time. Jiménez was very popular in part because of his struggles against the United Fruit Company's abusive operations in the country. Jiménez was proclaimed candidate in the Teatro Variedades during the first Republican National Convention, Costa Rica's first primary election. Jiménez won easily over the other candidate, former president Rafael Yglesias who ruled an authoritarian, though short-lived, regime.
The history of the Costa Rican legislature is long and starts from even before its formal independence from the Spanish Empire. Costa Rica is one of the world's oldest democracies, thus, its parliamentary history dates back several centuries.
The Reform State or Reformist State is a period in Costa Rican history characterized by the change in political and economic paradigm switching from the uncontrolled capitalism and laissez faire of the Liberal State into a more economically progressive Welfare State. The period ranges from approximately 1940 starting with the presidency of social reformer Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia and ends around the 1980s with the first neoliberal and Washington Consensus reforms that began after the government of Luis Alberto Monge.
The Fundamental Law of the Free State of Costa Rica, sometimes called the Political Constitution of 1825, was issued on January 25, 1825 by the Constituent Congress of the State of Costa Rica and during a time the country was a formal member of the Federal Republic of Central America. It would function until it was abrogated by Braulio Carrillo Colina who in 1838 takes power in a dictatorial manner and issues on March 8, 1841 the Decree of Basis and Guarantees that will operate as a de facto constitution until the arrival of Francisco Morazán in 1844 who overthrew Carrillo and was temporarily restored.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)